There's a really important piece of good news in publishing: AOL Time Warner Won't Sell Books Division.

While this may seem like a really boring bit of business news, in our household at least we've been on the edge of our seats waiting for the other shoe to drop on this one: If Bertelsman (which owns Random House) had bought the AOL Time Warner Book Division, this would have dropped the number of book distribution systems from four to three. And Random House has become a proponent of streamlining the number of titles. A Bertelsman aquisition of the AOL Time Warner Book Division looked to be a serious blow to science fiction, and probably the novel (and perhaps even the book) as such.